About

Biography

Sarah Allen Eagen is a New York City-based social practice artist originally from Toronto, Canada. She received her MFA from Parsons the New School of Design in 2013. Eagen specializes in using art as a means of social engagement around issues of diversity, violence prevention and violence against women. Eagen has exhibited her work extensively in the United States and Canada and has had work featured at Art Toronto (2017) and Nuit Blanche (2011). She. She has had solo exhibitions at Vitrina Gallery (New York, NY), BAU Gallery (Beacon, NY) and Chashama 461 Gallery (New York, NY). Her work has been featured in seventeen group exhibitions to date, including at The Kitchen (New York City), The Propeller Centre for the Arts (Toronto) and at The Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). She is currently a member of the Canadian Artist Collective, Painter8.

In 2011, Eagen was one of three lead female artists that co-created created “Honey I’m Home!”, an interactive film project that explored diversity and stereotypes that was featured at the Nuit Blanche Contemporary Art Festival. This project was featured in Blog T.O. and the Eyeopener, and was listed as one of 12 must-see exhibits by Notable, one of 17 must-see exhibits by The Eyeopener and one of twenty-six top exhibits by The Torontoist. That same year, she used organized and lead a team of students that placed 5th out of 3,000 in the global youth think tank “The Challenge: Future Competition”. In 2013, she completed The School of Visual Arts Bio Art Residency, and in 2016 was awarded participation in The Chashama Studio Space Residency in Manhattan. In 2017, she coached an interdisciplinary team at “Edit: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology in Toronto” to use Design Thinking to address the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.

Artist Statement

Sarah Allen Eagen’s artwork examines contemporary notions of beauty, obsession, identity, and intimacy. Inspired by technology, fashion, and the intersection of art and science, her work explores interpersonal relationships in the twenty-first century where intimacy is often replaced with immediacy. This theme has been an undercurrent in her work, as seen in her solo exhibitionsTender: Intimacy in the Digital Age and Anatomy of Desire. These exhibitions explore the sensual, vulnerable, and alienating aspects of the digitization of society. Feed Me Diamonds invites viewers to confront notions of narcissism, consumption, and instant gratification. Eagen’s artwork blurs the lines between artificial and real, comfort and discomfort, seduction and repulsion. In her artwork, made of silk, rubber, glitter, and wax, sensual forms are rendered clinical and are at once vulnerable and erotic.